Student Career Alternatives Program (SCAP) was invited to participate in a panel alongside The Movement to End Israeli Apartheid, and the War Resisters League entitled, "How the Anti-War Movement is Pro-Education". The panel was part of Georgia Students for Higher Education's summer conference.
SCAP, a project of the American Friends Service Committee, has long viewed the bloated war budget as a robbery from our communities. We don't see our national budget as some sort of shopping list but rather a list of national priorities. It is through this lense that we view our current national priorities with great alarm. This year our federal government will spend more than 50% of it’s budget on the military industrial complex while only spending 4% on education.
One paradox is that as we drain programs of social uplift, like education, and siphon more and more tax dollars from our communities into the war industry, we create pipelines from low and middle income communities into the military and prisons. We only wish this was speculative, there's plenty of data that backs up this sad reality we live in today.
School to prison pipeline:
http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/school-prison-pipeline-talking-points
The poverty draft:
http://www.notyoursoldier.org/section.php?id=3
During this economic crisis it's important that we begin to view the dollars and lives (of young recruits) that are taken from our communities to pay for these wars for what they are, a robbery from our society. Our national priorities should be educating our youth, healing our sick, feeding the hungry, and housing the homeless (many of whom are combat vets, still suffering the wounds of war).
SCAP was honored to be invited to present on the panel and looks forward to helping GSPHE build their October 7th statewide action.
Important Links:
SCAP:
www.scapatl.org
GSPHE:
http://gsphe.tk/
Photography by Caitie Leary
Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee
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