SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, Oct. 6 — A student-faculty anti-war group held a rally on campus against the budget cuts in the California State University (CSU) system, and the war spending that contribute to these cuts. One speaker explained that in the U.S., war spending trumps all other priorities, amounting to about $760 billion in 2009.

Over the period since the Iraq war began in 2003 up to 2008, the U.S. has reduced the funding for states and cities to provide services like Medicaid by about $136 billion, including about $16 billion for California. The one-time stimulus grant to California in 2009 of $8 billion doesn’t even make up for funds diverted to the wars in the previous five years! Clearly the fight against campus budget cuts must be linked to the fight against imperialist wars.

Two other speakers protested a racist change in the admission policy that is a part of the cutbacks. This policy gives preference to students from other parts of the state, and is likely to reduce the percentage of black and Latino students on this campus.

Another speaker explained that the current economic crisis “provides us with a clear view of the priorities that the state of California, the United States, or, more generally, any profit-driven economy must take.” He pointed out that California’s huge spending on its racist overcrowded prison system, where 70% of released inmates are sent back to prison, takes billions that should be spent on education and public services. The state spends $49,000 each on its 170,000 prisoners, more than 60% of whom are black and Latino, but has reduced state support of the CSU to $4,600 per student. “We should take the economic crisis as an opportunity to see clearly that the state’s priorities are not in the interests of working people, and recognize that these policies for war, for prison and for education cutbacks are not in our common interest as a working class.”