In his Sunday column, “Shouting shouldn’t sway big decisions on the economy,” James McCusker critiques a March 4 protest at the University of Washington as being too narrowly focused, highlighting the injustice of tuition increases but ignoring where the funds would come from. McCusker seems to be confused about two things.
First, he is completely ignoring the demands of this protest and of the organization that called the protest, the Student/Worker Coalition. The SWC has proposed solutions to the tuition problem that don’t involve laying off third grade teachers or closing clinics. We can start by cutting from the salaries of top administrators at UW. President Mark Emmert makes almost a million dollars and lives in the presidential mansion for free while he OKs the layoffs of janitors and teaching assistants — perhaps these priorities should be reconsidered.
On the state level, the poorest 20 percent of the people in Washington pay 17 percent of their income in taxes, while the richest pay 3 percent. Even a small increase of taxes on the rich could make significant differences in the state budget shortfall. On the federal level, let’s redirect money from wars to education. As UW worker Steve Leigh puts it, “The money is there — it just goes to the wrong people for the wrong purposes.”
Second, McCusker doesn’t understand how change actually happens in the United States. These sorts of demonstrations are the only tool we have to gain advances. African Americans gained several rights through demonstrations and militant struggle during the civil rights movement. Without protests and strikes, workers would never have won Social Security, welfare, the eight-hour workday or the right to organize in unions. During the Great Depression, FDR approved the New Deal as a response to mass uprisings against the economic conditions — directly refuting McCusker’s claim that the “piñata model only works in times of solid economic growth.”
Amy Smith
UW student/SWC member
Seattle
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