"An earlier generation of college students took on the Vietnam War. Now a new generation is poised to take on the mess in Sacramento."
This Christmas break, students from University of California and state and community college campuses will fan out across the state to collect signatures in support of an initiative that would free the Legislature from its two-thirds vote requirement on budget and revenue matters. Their goal is to collect enough signatures by April 15 to qualify for the November 2010 ballot.
Amid a welter of sit-ins, teach-ins and building takeovers, this is a bold effort to reach beyond the campuses and address the chronic problems of a dysfunctional Legislature and the state's fiscal crisis. If it passes, the California Democracy Act will allow a simple majority in the Legislature to pass a budget and balance it if necessary with new revenue sources.
The effort no doubt will be greeted with a great deal of cynicism. But, really, who better than a bunch of raw, politically inexperienced students to tackle the mess in Sacramento? Who else has the sense of urgency, the bulletproof optimism, needed for such an undertaking?
The initiative was written by Berkeley linguistics Professor George Lakoff, and its frontline troops are those directly affected by the state's budget mess: students whose futures and careers are being compromised by a 32 percent fee increase over the next
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