Dear March 4 Education Organizers and Marchers,

Greetings and congratulations from the Women’s Economic Agenda Project (WEAP).  Your efforts for basic access to quality education is not unnoticed and it brings inspiration to those of us engaged in efforts to bring forward a better world.

In a time when sports, arts and libraries are considered expendable, when schools throughout the Bay Area are being shut down, when the state and federal governments are making efforts to float our schools towards profit-based or “results-based” criteria, you are carrying an important banner—that quality education for all is a human right.  We cannot stand by as every child is left behind.  In this, the richest state in the richest country in the world, there is no excuse for the elimination, de-funding and destruction of our schools.

The Women’s Economic Agenda Project has set out many times across the state for multiple-day bus tours and marches raising the banner that education, as well as healthcare, living wage jobs, food and housing is an economic human right.  Without education our ability to earn a living and to secure healthcare, housing and food is jeopardized.  Similarly, without healthcare or a roof over our heads, the promises and potential of education is impeded and precluded.  It is no surprise to us that the first schools to be targeted for closure have the highest proportions of low wage and poor families.

What we are seeing today is not just another budget crisis or mismanagement of funds.  What we are seeing today is the destruction of the social contract that has provided for education for all people.  In a country where the only growing industries are retail, temporary and service jobs, it is no longer “necessary” to provide education for all people, at least in the eyes of the powerful and wealthy.  Our government’s repeated tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals have come at the cost of our education system, our healthcare and our jobs.  As you set out on your eight day trek, you are saying that our priorities have got to change.  The full potential of our children’s ability must be realized and no tax break to the wealthy is worth forfeiting that.

We stand with you not as a solitary organization but as representative of the broad network know as the California Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC).  We are students, teachers, doctors, lawyers; we are in recovery, homeless, uninsured, underinsured and unemployed.  We come from all walks of life but we know that only by walking together will be able to accomplish a world based on economic human rights—and the right to education—for all.

We fully endorse the March 4 Education and would like to be part of the March if possible.  We are available to do a teach-in with marchers on the economic human right to education, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign.  In return, we need to be educated on the flagrant human rights violations that are occurring throughout our school system and on the struggles, lessons and vision of all those involved in the March 4 Education.

Thank you for all your hard work and your vision of a better world.  Let’s talk about ways that we can work together towards achieving and broadening this fight.  All the best.

Sincerely,
Ethel Long-Scott and the Staff of the Women’s Economic Agenda Project