Our View-Veto paves boulevard of broken educational dreams

The climax of gubernatorial vetoes at midnight on Tuesday crushed the dreams of nearly 25,000 current undocumented students by killing Senate Bill 1301, the California Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act.

These young human beings have been cast into a life position they have no control over. Nearly every one of them is a high achiever held hostage by circumstances beyond individual choice, in a land that touts individual determination.

They have jumped through fiery hoops, danced the dance and dreamed the American dream of a higher education and a brighter tomorrow, prompting this public indictment.

Dear Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger,

You are without comparison the worst “leader” to govern this state since Gov. Peter Hardeman Burnett oversaw the U.S. fomentation of genocides against California’s indigenous peoples in the mid-19th century.

This, however, isn’t a history lesson about California’s first governor. You evidently aspire to surpass his heavy-handed treatment of every non-white or non-European human in your regime.

We could wax rhetorically about the way you facilitated your entry into office on a platform of protecting education, but we know that because of your hateful demeanor and contempt for shared opportunity, you will only shrug it off and light a celebratory cigar.

Perhaps your successor will pick up a different standard, though, if she or he studies the gaffes of your broken promises.

When you campaigned to replace Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, you repeatedly paraded elementary and middle school children across stages and promised to protect their academic futures. It was emotionally effective and we bought your dog and pony act by electing you.

Among those youth you used to promote yourself were students with dreams of higher education. Never could those beaming faces have imagined that their dreams were squashed once you took the oath of office.

Not only did you violate the Higher Education Compact of 2004 by raising tuitions in the California State University and University of California systems, but you have threatened every other level of education in our state with cuts to get your way in legislation.

To add insult to injury, you now have inflicted insurmountable pain on some of the most vulnerable young people under your watch. You squashed their dreams. And that’s just this year’s crop.

You dashed the hopes of those slogging through our elementary, middle and high schools, as well as those pushing themselves through community colleges throughout the state, with your refusal to recognize them as crucial contributors to this state’s future economy.

What was your shallow reasoning for this veto? The same blanket rejection you gave for every other of the “collateral damage” bills you rejected: You didn’t have time to review it because of more urgent state needs, or it wasn’t important to Californians.

That broken-record reasoning has suited you each time you’ve denied this and other humanitarian bills. The truth is that the youth you used to set up your regime are beneath you. They are no longer critical to your political ambitions. They are your personal throwaways.

You’ve ignored the majority’s demands — as represented by the millions of voters and hundreds of thousands of volunteers who supported the California DREAM Act — in order to bully through your personal agenda against the poor, the disabled, the underprivileged and our educators. You’ve acted like a thug with state employees and every level of social services.

For the atrocities you have wrought on our multiple structures, we implore the progressive-thinking people throughout our state to hold you accountable in order to stop you from killing all of our dreams.

We ask voters to seriously consider demanding your “Total Recall” before you can cause any more damage.

Sincerely,

Every student who dreams of equality and human rights.