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XochitlRodriguezSecondPaper 3 - 24 Jun 2013 - Main.EbenMoglen
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CALIFORNIA'S COMMUNITY COLLEGE CRISIS | | | The public education system in California is among the lowest ranking in the nation. One of the many symptoms of its broken system is demonstrated in the arena of its public higher education system, specifically in its community colleges. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-college-overview-20120923,0,3310236.story, http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_22870735/hundreds-thousands-have-been-shut-out-community-colleges. These schools are saturated with students, many of whom could not afford to attend a four-year university after high school, the rising price of attendance of public four-year universities being another symptom of California’s crippled education system. This saturation has been combined with a decline in the quality of education as colleges have scrambled to allocate funds “efficiently,” (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-community-colleges-html,0,3512910.htmlstory) one result of which has been job cuts and the resulting decline in class offerings. See the story of Cinthia Garcia for an illustration of the combined effect of the social phenomena that have just been described, just one of many who attended more than one California community college for a total of six years, and who still had to “[shift] her goals from a four-year degree, to a community college associate's degree, and now to a certificate, which requires fewer credits.” http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/04/local/la-me-college-one-class-20121004. | |
>
> | Why not make these URLs
links in the text? It would be far more readable and no less
informative. Isn't that how the Web is supposed to work?
| | | Suddenly, students, those who already are most affected by the high cost of higher education, are paying more for less, and those students for whom community college was once an affordable avenue to a four-year university or to an associate’s degree at the very least, are increasingly finding themselves priced out of access to higher education. This is especially problematic in light of another social phenomenon, being that higher education degrees have become more and more necessary to meet the qualifications of career jobs.
REMEDY? | | | The funds from this would then either fund public colleges and universities so that they would be able to accommodate the increased number of students and lower tuition and fees or they would go directly to students pursuing higher education, based on financial need and irrespective of ability, more like a welfare system and unlike a public grant or scholarship in this respect. This could also fund the implementation of more widespread supplemental education programs like StraighterLine? (http://www.straighterline.com/), which provide an affordable way to complete the necessary general education units to graduate.
Further, with corporations falling into the role of a more powerful direct stakeholder, public universities will be more pressed to find ways to improve their quality of education and the government more pressed to hold these institutions accountable for the education they provide. In addition, the public and private sectors will benefit greatly from the qualified workforce this funding will help provide. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cc-not-preparing-workforce-20120925-m,0,5060169.story | |
>
> | What's the claim? That
taxpayers have a legal obligation to pay more for public services
than they want to pay? On what basis would such a legal claim be
asserted?
| | | Of course, there would need to be a paradigm shift or a large movement before such tax could feasibly be imposed. The populous base is there, in those students and parents who have been frustrated at the cost of a public higher education that increasingly resembles a scam, as students can’t get the classes or they need to graduate. It is a matter of activating this population, a population which might have more sway than one would think, considering the affected group includes the large consumer base that is the young adult population as well as middle class parents who attempt to fund their children’s’ educations. This can occur school by school or district by district, activating a group of students and parents and going from there, building a movement and boycotting corporations who resist the tax imposed. | |
>
> |
Corporations don't resist property taxes to pay for higher
education: people do. They passed Prop 13 a generation ago, and by
doing so they destroyed the California public education system. The
voters who vote in California continue to prefer the limitations on
property taxes to improved public services for other, poorer people.
If you want that to change, the poor must register and vote.
| | | I would begin with this affected population, identify the main issues affecting them, and search for legal remedy while activating them in an effort to seek a systematic solution together. | |
>
> |
What makes you think there's a "legal" remedy for the injustice of
oligarchy? Since when is it illegal for the rich to run the world?
If you want democracy, the rule of the poor, do you expect,
seriously, to get it established for you in the courts of the rich?
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XochitlRodriguezSecondPaper 2 - 23 Jun 2013 - Main.XochitlRodriguez
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CALIFORNIA'S COMMUNITY COLLEGE CRISIS | | | | |
<
< | Criminalizing Communities | >
> | THE PROBLEM | | | | |
>
> | The public education system in California is among the lowest ranking in the nation. One of the many symptoms of its broken system is demonstrated in the arena of its public higher education system, specifically in its community colleges. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-college-overview-20120923,0,3310236.story, http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_22870735/hundreds-thousands-have-been-shut-out-community-colleges. These schools are saturated with students, many of whom could not afford to attend a four-year university after high school, the rising price of attendance of public four-year universities being another symptom of California’s crippled education system. This saturation has been combined with a decline in the quality of education as colleges have scrambled to allocate funds “efficiently,” (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-community-colleges-html,0,3512910.htmlstory) one result of which has been job cuts and the resulting decline in class offerings. See the story of Cinthia Garcia for an illustration of the combined effect of the social phenomena that have just been described, just one of many who attended more than one California community college for a total of six years, and who still had to “[shift] her goals from a four-year degree, to a community college associate's degree, and now to a certificate, which requires fewer credits.” http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/04/local/la-me-college-one-class-20121004. | | | | |
<
< | Criminal Social Status | >
> | Suddenly, students, those who already are most affected by the high cost of higher education, are paying more for less, and those students for whom community college was once an affordable avenue to a four-year university or to an associate’s degree at the very least, are increasingly finding themselves priced out of access to higher education. This is especially problematic in light of another social phenomenon, being that higher education degrees have become more and more necessary to meet the qualifications of career jobs. | | | | |
<
< | Why is it ok, no, why is it legal, for police to look at my aunts and uncles, at my best friend from grade school, and to be able to ask for their papers on the spot? Why is it legal for them to live in fear, with essentially criminal status, their freedoms restricted, having been barred an easy path to citizenship, despite having lived in this country for years, working harder than most and making a positive contribution? Why is it legal for my cousins to be stopped by police more than necessary, simply for being Latino and low-income in Los Angeles? Why is it legal for low-income people of color to be stopped and subject to humiliating and degrading searches by police simply for being black and Latino in New York City? And why is it legal for entire communities to be so isolated from resources that youth have no option but to commit crime, becoming part of a culture that celebrates crime and criminals? | >
> | REMEDY? | | | | |
<
< | It is a criminalization of entire communities, and it is what the law endorses. Just like in Dudley v. Stephens, the law is part and parcel of, and a support to, a society that oppresses certain communities and groups of people for others’ gain. We criminalize low-income people of color, just like they prosecuted Dudley, to have somewhere to place the blame, to have an “evil” to juxtapose against the “good” that is the white, hardworking, civilized majority. It is in furtherance of a social hierarchy and the myth of an American Dream, the idea that low-income communities of color and immigrant communities are leeches of society, and therefore their continued oppression is valid. Propped up by this validation, we can continue to exploit these communities, ignoring their needs, stripping them of dignities and freedoms, and allowing them to work in our service as they attempt to escape their condition. | >
> | In terms of legal solutions that come to mind, one is that of holding public colleges and universities accountable for the quality of education, in particular the amount of classes offered, so that students are able to graduate in a timely manner. As part of this, students who have been forced to prolong their terms of study for lack of available classes could seek remedy of some sort.
Considering the limitations of legal remedies, it only makes sense to combine legal pursuit of justice with social pursuit of justice, looking for a systematic way to benefit the affected population and provide more affordable access to higher education, at least making one small step towards bridging the access gap. While there are many ways to attack this problem on a policy level, my thought is this: a sort of higher education subsidy system, in the form of a tax would be placed on private corporations that would go directly to providing more affordable higher education. The plans have already been proposed, for example by the California Community College Board, it is the funding that has been lacking. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/01/california-community-colleges-endorse-sweeping-reforms.html. | | | | |
<
< | The Law: Status Quo vs. Justice | >
> | The funds from this would then either fund public colleges and universities so that they would be able to accommodate the increased number of students and lower tuition and fees or they would go directly to students pursuing higher education, based on financial need and irrespective of ability, more like a welfare system and unlike a public grant or scholarship in this respect. This could also fund the implementation of more widespread supplemental education programs like StraighterLine? (http://www.straighterline.com/), which provide an affordable way to complete the necessary general education units to graduate.
Further, with corporations falling into the role of a more powerful direct stakeholder, public universities will be more pressed to find ways to improve their quality of education and the government more pressed to hold these institutions accountable for the education they provide. In addition, the public and private sectors will benefit greatly from the qualified workforce this funding will help provide. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cc-not-preparing-workforce-20120925-m,0,5060169.story | | | | |
<
< | This is a natural function of the law when it is seen in its role in the wider society – the law has a role of upholding and maintaining the status quo, of legitimizing its institutions and mores. However, this function of the law flies in the face of conceptions of justice. And it brings me to wonder about the place of justice in the law. | >
> | Of course, there would need to be a paradigm shift or a large movement before such tax could feasibly be imposed. The populous base is there, in those students and parents who have been frustrated at the cost of a public higher education that increasingly resembles a scam, as students can’t get the classes or they need to graduate. It is a matter of activating this population, a population which might have more sway than one would think, considering the affected group includes the large consumer base that is the young adult population as well as middle class parents who attempt to fund their children’s’ educations. This can occur school by school or district by district, activating a group of students and parents and going from there, building a movement and boycotting corporations who resist the tax imposed. | | | | |
>
> | I would begin with this affected population, identify the main issues affecting them, and search for legal remedy while activating them in an effort to seek a systematic solution together. | | | | |
<
< | Working for change for these communities within the system that criminalizes them? | | | | |
<
< | How can a system so engrained in the wider social system be used to uproot that system, to win justice for the communities that it has criminalized and oppressed? Can it be secretly ambushed, the fight for justice cloaked in the language and form of the mainstream, as Arnold would suggest? But can this be effective? Can a revolution really be made palatable to the status quo and to the perpetrators of? | | | | |
<
< | Take Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al., the federal class action challenging New York City’s Stop and Frisk program. As sympathetic as plaintiff Floyd is, a young black medical student, will the law really be able to name as criminals the defendant police officers and the city of New York, or will it continue to hold as criminally suspicious the act of being person of color? Can the system really turn itself around in this way? When a law, like the Fourth Amendment’s reasonable suspicion requirement, can be construed in virtually any way, the law doesn’t seem to matter so much as those who are in power and who will be deciding how to construe it. And justice seems to be at their whims. And can a society and a legal system whose whims have recently demonstrated an ill favor toward the continued need for affirmative action (See Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin) decide now that the treatment of people of color by police is unlawful, going against the well-established practice of criminalizing these communities? | | | | |
<
< |
-- XochitlRodriguez - 08 Apr 2013 | >
> | -- XochitlRodriguez - 22 Jun 2013 |
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XochitlRodriguezSecondPaper 1 - 08 Apr 2013 - Main.XochitlRodriguez
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> | Criminalizing Communities
Criminal Social Status
Why is it ok, no, why is it legal, for police to look at my aunts and uncles, at my best friend from grade school, and to be able to ask for their papers on the spot? Why is it legal for them to live in fear, with essentially criminal status, their freedoms restricted, having been barred an easy path to citizenship, despite having lived in this country for years, working harder than most and making a positive contribution? Why is it legal for my cousins to be stopped by police more than necessary, simply for being Latino and low-income in Los Angeles? Why is it legal for low-income people of color to be stopped and subject to humiliating and degrading searches by police simply for being black and Latino in New York City? And why is it legal for entire communities to be so isolated from resources that youth have no option but to commit crime, becoming part of a culture that celebrates crime and criminals?
It is a criminalization of entire communities, and it is what the law endorses. Just like in Dudley v. Stephens, the law is part and parcel of, and a support to, a society that oppresses certain communities and groups of people for others’ gain. We criminalize low-income people of color, just like they prosecuted Dudley, to have somewhere to place the blame, to have an “evil” to juxtapose against the “good” that is the white, hardworking, civilized majority. It is in furtherance of a social hierarchy and the myth of an American Dream, the idea that low-income communities of color and immigrant communities are leeches of society, and therefore their continued oppression is valid. Propped up by this validation, we can continue to exploit these communities, ignoring their needs, stripping them of dignities and freedoms, and allowing them to work in our service as they attempt to escape their condition.
The Law: Status Quo vs. Justice
This is a natural function of the law when it is seen in its role in the wider society – the law has a role of upholding and maintaining the status quo, of legitimizing its institutions and mores. However, this function of the law flies in the face of conceptions of justice. And it brings me to wonder about the place of justice in the law.
Working for change for these communities within the system that criminalizes them?
How can a system so engrained in the wider social system be used to uproot that system, to win justice for the communities that it has criminalized and oppressed? Can it be secretly ambushed, the fight for justice cloaked in the language and form of the mainstream, as Arnold would suggest? But can this be effective? Can a revolution really be made palatable to the status quo and to the perpetrators of?
Take Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al., the federal class action challenging New York City’s Stop and Frisk program. As sympathetic as plaintiff Floyd is, a young black medical student, will the law really be able to name as criminals the defendant police officers and the city of New York, or will it continue to hold as criminally suspicious the act of being person of color? Can the system really turn itself around in this way? When a law, like the Fourth Amendment’s reasonable suspicion requirement, can be construed in virtually any way, the law doesn’t seem to matter so much as those who are in power and who will be deciding how to construe it. And justice seems to be at their whims. And can a society and a legal system whose whims have recently demonstrated an ill favor toward the continued need for affirmative action (See Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin) decide now that the treatment of people of color by police is unlawful, going against the well-established practice of criminalizing these communities?
-- XochitlRodriguez - 08 Apr 2013 |
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