In Los Angeles today, five hundred members of SEIU ULTCW joined a coalition of labor, business, education, and faith groups at a massive downtown rally to kick-off "March for California's Future."
Along with home care workers, hundreds of nurses, students, police officers and fire fighters will be marching for parts of this 250-mile, 48-day trek to the state capitol in Sacramento. Why are they marching? From the march website, www.fight4cafuture.com:
Instead of making tough choices, our governor and a minority of legislators think the "solution" is deep and destructive cuts to essential services: our schools, parks, libraries, infrastructure, safety net services and other vital public institutions.
[...] Budget cuts are not inevitable, but the result of political choices. We cannot allow a minority of legislators to enact budgets that destroy rather than build.
Today, ULTCW launched their own campaign to fight Gov. Schwarzenegger's draconian cuts to the state's home care program. "Protecting California includes protecting the state's in-home care program," said Laphonza Butler, President-Elect of SEIU ULTCW. "Eliminating the IHSS program would result in more than 426,000 low-income seniors and disabled citizens losing the only services they receive to live safely at home, and over 328,000 in-home caregivers losing their jobs."
If the Governor has his way, his proposed 2010-2011 budget cuts to the in-home care program will cause California's unemployment rate to hit nearly 14%. Cutting in-home care doesn't help California - it only hurts California. How much longer is Governor Schwarzenegger going to pretend this isn't the case?
