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Philadelphia students: Education not incarceration

Published Apr 7, 2011 8:37 PM

Student protest in Philadelphia, March 30.
WW photo: Joseph Piette

Demanding “education not incarceration,” more than 2,000 college and high school students marched against Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s plans to cut $1 billion in state funding for education.

Hundreds of high school students from Sayre, Bok, Furness, South Philadelphia, Kensington, Paul Robeson, CAPA, West, Bodine, Edison, Sankofa Freedom Academy — from 25 high schools in all — massed in front of the city’s main courthouse on March 30. They chanted “No education, no life” as students kept coming in, arriving by mass transit or by foot after schools let out.

The diverse crowd doubled, than tripled as students from Penn State, Temple and other local colleges joined in. They had earlier marched from Temple University to the State Office Building to protest proposed cuts affecting university education, then walked another half mile to join their brothers and sisters at the Criminal Justice Center.

According to a nearby plaque, today’s protest took place near the site where the great labor organizer Mother Jones began “The March of the Factory Children.” In July 1903, some 200 youth walked from Philadelphia to New York City “to dramatize the need for child labor legislation.”

On their banner was the demand “We want more schools and less hospitals.” The hospitals referred to where children ended up from the injuries they suffered in dangerous but profitable factory conditions.

Over 100 years later, today’s youth were chanting “More classmates, less inmates” because the proposed budget includes an 11 percent increase in funds for inhuman but profitable prisons while school funding is slashed.

Many students have loved ones in prison, often for petty, nonviolent crimes. The students know the latest cuts will inevitably push more young people into the school-to-prison pipeline. They will also eliminate opportunities for youth to access higher education and cut badly needed jobs and services from their schools.

Pennsylvania’s prison population has already grown from 8,200 in 1980 to 51,500 in 2010. In addition, the annual cost per inmate in that period has grown from $11,400 to more than $32,000. While most states are reducing prison populations and shutting down prisons, Pennsylvania is continuing to increase incarceration rates.

Among the groups that organized today’s protest were the Campaign for Nonviolent Schools, Service Employees Local 32 BJ, UNITE HERE Local 634, Parent Power, Action United, One Love Movement, Our City Our Schools, Youth Art and Self-Empowerment Project, Urban Nutrition Initiative, Media Mobilizing Project and the Philadelphia Student Union.

As the march passed by a taxi stand on the way to the final rally at the School District Headquarters, cabdrivers in waiting cabs sounded their horns in solidarity. Many vehicles were decorated with pro-education signs.