Univ. of Arizona against the cuts

By Angela Stoutenburgh | September 21, 2009

TUCSON, Ariz.--More than 50 graduate students, faculty and staff met on September 15 at the Old Main Fountain on the University of Arizona (UA) campus to discuss an action planned against ongoing budget cuts.

These cuts include merging the College of Engineering and the College of Architecture at the university.

Also of concern to university employees is House Bill 2013, which was signed into law on September 4 and, according to the Arizona Daily Wildcat, "will prevent state-employed, same-sex domestic partners from claiming state benefits for their partners as well as unmarried heterosexual couples, children of domestic partners, full-time students over the age of 22 who are claimed as dependents and disabled adult dependents."

This rally-turned-organizing meeting, called on by a number of graduate students in the Geography Department, broke into four planning groups--education, publicity, communication and action. Each group is taking on different aspects of organizing for a rally on the main UA quad on September 24. The rally is in solidarity with a walkout scheduled that day at the University of California.

These grassroots collective efforts are precisely the struggle that we need to keep the Arizona state legislature from balancing the budget on backs of workers and students.

"Univ. of Arizona against the cuts" was originally published in Socialist Worker. Angela Stoutenburgh is a graduate student at the University of Arizona and a member of the International Socialist Organization.

Campus Wide Rally Against Budget Cuts

The following is the formal press release from graduate students at the University of Arizona. There will be a rally today at 2pm at the Old Main Fountain in protest of the budget cuts. Considering the 6% tuition increase, the absurd "Economic Recovery Surcharge" that all students have to pay, and the new House Bill 2013 (more information here), it is time that students and workers take action.

UA Job-Loss/Unionizing Campus-wide assembly 9/18, 2pm

BUDGET CUTS AFFECT US ALL!
600 UA JOBS LOST ALREADY!
Join a group of concerned faculty, students and staff to learn about how budget
cuts will affect us and help plan a university-wide day of action to let state
law makers and university administration know we won?t stand by as higher
education is dismantled.

When: Friday, Sept 18 @ 2:00pm
Where: Old Main Fountain
Goals: (1) Establish a unified voice amongst those concerned about budget cuts
to higher education at the UofA. (2) Plan a university-wide day of action in
solidarity with the faculty, staff and students of the UC system, who are
staging a walkout on September 24th.

...

more info:


At the University of Arizona we are facing the most dramatic budget cuts
and restructuring of the University in a generation. These cuts will
affect every aspect of the University system – from the quality of
education available to students, to the conditions of our labor as
researchers, teachers, administrators and staff.

The administration is pursuing a strategy designed to weaken our capacity
for collective action, our ability to protect our interests and
participate in the budget and restructuring process.

In some departments, Graduate Teaching Assistants, already working for
poverty wages, have seen their salaries slashed. In others, course loads
have been expanded overnight, with little explanation and no
accountability. Faculty have been furloughed in a way that minimizes
disruption to teaching, and maximizes the possibility that they will
continue working without pay. Hiring freezes and layoffs are undermining
the integrity and functioning of departments and spreading work around to
already over-burdened faculty and staff. And the decisions about whose
budget is cut, by how much and why have been anything but transparent and
accountable, let alone "participatory". All of this while new fees and
"tuition surcharges" reduce access to and affordability of higher
education, redistributing the burden of budget shortfalls onto the backs
of students.

The UA budget has been cut as much as possible under the current
stimulus
 package. If it is cut any more, we will lose our stimulus
funding. The 2010 state budget will not include any stimulus money, and
state
 revenues are already coming in under projection. We will have
no protection from further dramatic cuts after this fiscal year.

By subjecting the budgetary restructuring to an arbitrary and subjective
process whose impact is felt differentially, we remain divided and pitted
against each other, rather than capable of uniting around our common
interests. As long as we remain divided in our individual colleges and
departments we will have no power or voice as our colleagues lose their
jobs, as the conditions of our labor and the quality of our institution
deteriorates, and as the legislature and administration continue to pull
the rug out from under our feet.

For these reasons, we invite graduate assistants, faculty and staff to a
meeting on Friday September 18 at 2pm on the fountain in front of Old Main
organize an action in solidarity with the faculty, staff and students of
the UC system.

Budget Cuts with Messed up Priorities

This may be old news to many of you but I thought to carry on the theme from earlier regarding budget cuts. (see our previous blog about Capitol "for sale") It is a common theme, actually, making headlines from Newsweek to the New York Times, from Facebook to real books?

The point is, everyone understands that now is the worst economic crisis practically anyone has ever seen, especially those of us in younger generations. For students it's the "tuition increase"; for teachers it's the "raise freeze". For workers it's the "unpaid overtime"; for the unemployed it means longer lines at the unemployment office. For patients it means "preexisting condition;" for physicians it means fighting the health insurance giants. For the majority it means paying more and getting less and coming to your whit's end trying to pay the bills; for the selected few it means massive bailouts, huge bonuses, and dinners at the White House.

So today's example of messed up priorities around budgets cuts is something close to home: the Arizona Water Institute. For those of you, who do not know, it closed as of July 1st, due to budget cuts. Rather than realizing the long term significance of water research (in a state that is mostly desert!), the entire budget was cut. Only two of their projects remain and information can be found on their website regarding both of these projects: AHIS and EWSR.

But such extremes do not go without other examples of the other side of a messed up system. An article from Socialist Worker, which talks about the bottled water industry is appropriate here. "Profit in a Bottle" written by Dahlia El-Shafei talks about the documentary "Tapped." According to El-Shafei, this documentary, although sharp with its criticisms and statistics, leaves the viewer much more empowered than one would anticipate. That's quite a change of pace from some of the usual suspects.

The bottled water industry is notorious for threatening the water supply. With such brutal facts as "it takes 17.5 kilograms of water just to produce one kilogram of plastic used to make the bottles" it's truly a wonder that they have not been stopped sooner.

At a time when our natural resources are being consumed without restraint and our environments are on the bring of collapse it seems that an easy solution to "Enhancing Water Supply Reliability" would be to get big corporations like Nestle and Coke out of natural water supplies and out of the bottled water industry!

What will state governments do to "fix" the budgets?

I'll tell you one thing they won't do: tax the rich.

Two recent events this last week really expose the degeneracy of some of our elected leadership. Firstly, earlier this week California congressmen came out triumphantly after a 20 hour deliberation on a new budget. Secondly, Arizona state lawmakers found a way to balance their own budget: put a for sale sign on the Capitol's lawn.

The great bipartisan compromise between Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democratic majority State Assembly amounts to nothing more than a big "screw you" to Californians, who need help the most: elderly, sick, children, workers and students. Jerald Reodica writes for Socialist Worker that the bill totaled a "staggering 15.5 billion" in cuts. In a time when unemployment is reaching new highs, with millions more losing their jobs each month, the bipartisan dream team agreed to cut $528 million from CalWORKS, the state's welfare program. And, continuing on in California's fashion, $6.1 billion is being cut out of funding for public education K-14. Community colleges and the state universities are not spared from these budget cuts either.

Economists are already coming out with projections that the budget will fall short. And of course we can make our own projections; when the budget falls short it will again be the workers, students, elderly and sick who have to make sacrifices. Once again the social welfare system takes the hit and not Big Business. Time and time again industries such as Apple and Warner Brothers can enjoy tax breaks while working class people have to figure out how to make ends meet.

As for Arizona, it is not as if anyone is sad to see the face of government sold off to the highest bidder. Well maybe, there are some. But, the fact remains that in order to balance the budget Arizona is going to start planting some "For Sale" signs on their front lawn. According to Howard Fischer with Capitol Media Services the Arizona Capitol is going on the market for $18 million. Through some convenient loopholes in legislation, the government can sell property, then lease it back. There is even an option to "own it outright," explains Fischer.

In an interview Kirk Adams, the House Speaker, admits that there is "always a cost to borrowing money." But when he says "we'll pay that cost as well," it is clear that he has forgotten, who will really front that bill. It is not the state's lawmakers but the state's citizens. Much as the federal bailouts of Big Banks has been passed on to American citizens, so will the cost of borrowing money (against their own property no less).

American citizens have to fight back these injustices, both on a local and federal level. It should not be the sick, the young, the homeless, jobless, and overworked, who have to "balance the budgets" on their own backs. It should be the big corporations that have racked in big profits off of our labor.

To read Jerald's full article visit Socialist Worker Online.

You can check out Howard's full article here.