Green Party leaders spoke out on education at the beginning of the New Year and called for a student debt jubilee and free tuition to state colleges and universities in 2013.
Check out what Jill Stein, 2012 Green Party nominee for President had to say: "A student debt jubilee, with forgiveness for all student loans, would be more than just a New Year's gift for students and former students enduring crushing student loan debt while facing dim prospects in today's job market. Freeing students from the debt trap would be comparable to the GI Bill, enacted after World War II, which sent millions of veteransto college and helped jumpstart America's postwar period of unprecedented prosperity. Instead of buying up $40 billion a month in toxic mortgage securities, we should be buying up student loans and forgiving them. Instead of bailing out the banks, whose waste, fraud, and abuse caused the economic crisis, we should be bailing out the students who are the victims of that crisis."
Check out what Alex Shantz, Youth Caucus delegate to the Green Party's National Committee and co-chair for the Green Party of California had to say: "Students in the U.S. are being cheated. Skyrocketing tuition costs have burdened today's students with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars as interest compounds. Financial sector companies, including Sallie Mae, have turned higher education into a scheme for indentured servitude, with many students stuck in low-paying jobs. The current system is creating compliant workers for Big Business and is resegregating our schools by race and economic class. Meanwhile, students in Europe enjoy free or low-cost college tuition at state-run colleges and universities."
According to the Green Party leaders, US needs a student movement against the debt trap and mounting tuition costs, -- a movement that's comparable to the student protests of the 1960s. Jill Stein made the $1 trillion student debt crisis and the need for drastic change a top priority in her campaign as the Green Party's 2012 presidential nominee.
This debt is a drag on the U.S. economy, while bipartisan austerity measures, combined with high military spending and tax cuts for the wealthy, are only creating more debt and making more students and graduates helpless. We urge students in the U.S. to stand up and protest -- like the students in Quebec who demonstrated en masse against tuition hikes in 2012 and won concessions."
